Is the 1950X ThreadRipper worth it?
Is the 1950X ThreadRipper worth it?
I currently have an AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT and a B550 motherboard. I've checked eBay and found a ThreadRipper 1950X with 16 cores for around $250. Pairing it with an sTRX4 board from eBay would cost about $500 total (CPU and board). Should this still be worthwhile given the performance of the new Raptor Lake CPUs?
With a solid B550 board and strong power delivery, you might consider the 5900X or even the 5950X, which will outperform the threadripper in most scenarios—especially when tasks are single-threaded. If you opt for the threadripper setup, expect to need a new (and reasonably efficient) CPU cooler, since threadripper connectors are significantly larger than AM4.
For heavy PCIe demands, the first-gen Threadripper works but struggles overall. It falls short compared to a 5900X upgrade and performs similarly to an overclocked 13600K without E Cores enabled. If you don’t require more than 40 PCIe lanes, there are significantly better alternatives.
I agree with what you mentioned. A bit about your explanation: the early Treadripper models used the TR4 socket, not sTRX40, and you need the X399 chipset. As for the recommendation, the first-gen Treadripper is quite challenging to convince people about, so a standard Ryzen chip would be more practical.
It was beneficial to have many PCIe lanes available (60 slots and M.2 connectors provided) and also important if you required 128 GB of memory (with only 8 slots and a max RAM of 16 GB, that equals 128 GB). Today you can purchase 32 GB modules so you can achieve 128 GB in just four slots, making PCIe lanes the main advantage. It's not necessary anymore, as newer Ryzen models are significantly faster.